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A review by elisabethshelby
The Painted Queen by Elizabeth Peters, Joan Hess
3.0
Unlike other Elizabeth Peters novels, I struggled to finish this last book in the Amelia Peabody series. Not because of Joan Hess's prose. I've seen a few reviews rip her writing apart, and while I don't think it read as clearly as Elizabeth Peters' did, I can't fault her for making the best of an awkward situation of trying to finish someone else's manuscript. Where I did struggle was how this story related to the other stories in the series, and how little it held me glued to my seat, like Amelia Peabody books of the past.
First off - this book takes place between The Falcon at the Portal and He Shall Thunder in the Sky. The tension between Nefret and Ramses (both sexual and non-sexual) should be oozing from these pages. Knowing how the story for them turns out, I should be thrilled to find them here in this awkward no-man's-land, in love but unable to find the way to show that to each other.
And yet....they're barely in the book. This book is centered 99% around Amelia only, with only a few very brief Manuscript H narratives thrown in, almost as an afterthought. The book is so wrapped up in Amelia that they send Emerson away to Cairo for a large chunk of the narrative, having Amelia deal with villains and the missing bust of Nefertiti without her lovable other half.
I want to believe that Joan Hess decided to focus on Amelia's story, and not the others, because it made things easier for her - inheriting a family like the Emerson's 19 stories in is not an easy task for any author to try to breathe life into. However, by abandoning so many of the story lines to focus on Amelia's left the plot lacking in many spots. At times I felt the pacing was too off - too quickly resolved in some areas, and too dragged out in others.
I am thankful for the last story Elizabeth was able to give us, and won't criticize this book the way others have (hello, Amazon reviews). But in my own mind, the story felt incomplete. I would've liked a final story about the entire Emerson family. As it stands, this was a final story about Amelia, and while a nice read, it feels anti-climatic for this wonderful family I've come to adore over the years.
First off - this book takes place between The Falcon at the Portal and He Shall Thunder in the Sky. The tension between Nefret and Ramses (both sexual and non-sexual) should be oozing from these pages. Knowing how the story for them turns out, I should be thrilled to find them here in this awkward no-man's-land, in love but unable to find the way to show that to each other.
And yet....they're barely in the book. This book is centered 99% around Amelia only, with only a few very brief Manuscript H narratives thrown in, almost as an afterthought. The book is so wrapped up in Amelia that they send Emerson away to Cairo for a large chunk of the narrative, having Amelia deal with villains and the missing bust of Nefertiti without her lovable other half.
I want to believe that Joan Hess decided to focus on Amelia's story, and not the others, because it made things easier for her - inheriting a family like the Emerson's 19 stories in is not an easy task for any author to try to breathe life into. However, by abandoning so many of the story lines to focus on Amelia's left the plot lacking in many spots. At times I felt the pacing was too off - too quickly resolved in some areas, and too dragged out in others.
I am thankful for the last story Elizabeth was able to give us, and won't criticize this book the way others have (hello, Amazon reviews). But in my own mind, the story felt incomplete. I would've liked a final story about the entire Emerson family. As it stands, this was a final story about Amelia, and while a nice read, it feels anti-climatic for this wonderful family I've come to adore over the years.